The Secret Republican Plan To Save America By Making Abortions (AKA Healthcare) Inaccesible

Hi remember when the House (which at this point is synonymous pretty much with “the Republicans in Congress”) tried to cut all funding for Planned Parenthood? That was super cute but ended up not working. At least not then. But if you thought that meant Planned Parenthood – or, you know, women in America – were safe, hoo boy were you wrong! What are those wacky misogynistic politicians up to this week?

Well! They’re expected to pass HR3, which is also known as the “No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act,” which tells you pretty much everything you need to know right there because TAXPAYERS ALREADY DO NOT FUND ABORTION. Minor point. What this would actually do is penalize private insurance companies if they cover abortion, which means this bill would be more accurately titled “No Affordable Access To Abortion, Even Though You Yourself Are A Taxpayer And Therefore Entitled To Healthcare Act.” I guess that’s a lot longer though, not as catchy.

“This is definitely breaking new ground for federal funding abortion bans,” Julie Rovner of NPR just said on C-SPAN of HR3. “I have never seen a situation quite this,” professor George Washington University law professor Sara Rosenbaum told the Los Angeles Times of Indiana’s ban. Along with the failed attempt to strip Planned Parenthood of all federal funding, this is yet another new frontier in the abortion wars — which manages to hurt women’s access to medical care more than it’s expected to move the needle on abortion.

To reiterate once again, in case this is unclear: even to the extent that Planned Parenthood is funded by the federal government, zero of those dollars will ever ever go to fund an abortion, as that is illegal. They will instead go to help women PLAN their PARENTHOOD, to treat sexually transmitted diseases, to provide birth control so abortion won’t be necessary, and provide a wide range of basic healthcare treatment for women who have no health insurance and therefore no other option for healthcare. Also, as we’ve mentioned before, they’re often a safer and more accessible option for queer people. When you cut any kind of funding to Planned Parenthood, that’s what you’re cutting funding for – rarely, if ever, abortions. (Although cutting funding

"I'VE NEVER EVEN HAD AN ABORTION, HAVE YOU?" "NOPE! JUST, YOU KNOW, HEALTHCARE!"

And if that wasn’t enough, there’s this: Indiana governor Mitch Daniels has said he will sign a bill denying Medicaid recipients the right to seek ANY care at Planned Parenthood – he’s not even pretending this is just about restricting access to abortion. This is clearly and unabashedly a plan to punish and make an example of any organization that provides abortions, or even care for women and marginalized groups (Medicaid is an insurance option for people whose income falls below a government-mandated poverty line). But really, this isn’t about decreasing abortions, is it? There are 28 Planned Parenthood centers in Indiana, and only 4 of them even offer abortions. And if it was, then there would be much more interest in funding for access to birth control, just for one example.

What Daniels is doing seems pretty clearly illegal, and Medicaid and Planned Parenthood have both indicated that they will look into legal action to protect their patients:

“If the state denies payment to these providers, that would be illegal,” said Mary Kahn, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the U.S. agency that administers the two huge healthcare programs. “There are some options available to us. But I can’t say what action will be taken to bring the state into compliance. All we can say now is we will review the matter once Indiana decides.”

But this hasn’t stopped many from speculating that other states may follow in Indiana’s example. Oh, and just fyi, there are still ongoing efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in Congress, they just didn’t happen to work in time for the final budget compromise earlier this year. And also moving to Canada isn’t really a viable response, if it ever was. So! Enjoy! And go get that weird itching checked out while you still can.

The Anti-Gays Must Be Crazy

Right now you’re probably calmly living your regular gay life, just being gay and making out with gay people and having lunch or supper or you’re riding a bike or going bra shopping while meanwhile you are also ruining the world.

1. In Which Pat Robertson Links Homosexuality to Abortion

Pat Robertson, this cranky old rich white man who says terrible things on the teevee, spoke recently on his program The 700 Club (which is named for the fact that its existence makes me 700 times crazier than normal) about Planned Parenthood funding and Obama’s “culture of death.” Apparently, pro-choice activists aren’t motivated by, you know, a belief that a woman should have the right to choose what she does to her own body but that  “they want to put lesbians and straight women on a level playing field.”

Pat Robertson: “If a woman is a lesbian, what advantage does she have over a married woman? Or what deficiency does she have?”

No worries Pat — thanks to people like you, lesbians aren’t exactly the most advantaged population in the U.S.

Aside from the fact that his argument is clearly wrong, I don’t understand the argument he’s making here at all. Do you?

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2. In Which Prop 8 Activists Use Bigotry to Promote Bigotry Cause Gay Judges Can’t Judge

The Anti-Equality people have filed a motion to vacate Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling because when he goes home after work and gets into bed, there is a man lying there with all his man-parts and man-thoughts. Here’s how they phrased that:

Given that Chief Judge Walker was in a committed, long-term, same-sex relationship throughout this case (and for many years before the case commenced), it is clear that his “impartiality might reasonably [have been] questioned” from the outset. He therefore had, at a minimum, a waivable conflict and was obligated either to recuse himself or to provide “full disclosure on the record of the basis for disqualification,” so that the parties could consider and decide, before the case proceeded further, whether to request his recusal. His failure to do either was a clear violation of Section 455(a), whose “goal … is to avoid even the appearance of partiality.”

This is gross and non-sensical, as it “relies on the same faulty argument put forth originally in defense of Prop 8: The qualitative judgment that same-sex relationships are inferior,” says The Washington Post. Firstly, if you argue it’s his relationship status (which, again, is irrelevant) is the real problem here then would it be okay for a Judge to rule if he had just started dating someone? What if he sort of had a crush on his gay best friend but hadn’t told him yet? What if he had a sweet one night stand last night and felt like true love? What if he was dating two guys but just couldn’t make up his mind on who he liked better? That’s not for us to evaluate, obviously. It’s his private life.

Greg Sargent for The Washington Post:

The problem is that this same logic could be applied to a straight, married judge hearing the case. After all, supporters of the same-sex marriage ban are arguing that marriage equality is so damaging to the institution of marriage that the government has a vital interest in making sure gays and lesbians can’t get married. That means that a straight, married judge couldn’t be expected to be impartial, either — after all, according to supporters of Prop 8, “the further deinstitutionalization of marriage caused by the legalization of same-sex marriage,” would directly impact married heterosexuals. Therefore, a heterosexual, married judge could be seen as having just as much “skin in the game” as Judge Walker.

In a worth-reading Atlantic piece on Why the New Prop 8 Argument is Bogus– and Offensive, Andrew Cohen points out: “No reasonable person in America today would challenge a black judge by claiming he could not fairly judge a civil rights case. No reasonable person in America today would challenge a female judge claiming she could not fairly judge a case about women’s health. “

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3. In Which Pro-Equality Judges Can’t Judge

Iowa House Republicans filed four articles of impeachment for the members of the Iowa Supreme Court who were part of a legislative ban on same-sex marriage. This isn’t gonna work, but do these guys need a hobby or something? What is the point of this.

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4. In Which Nice People in Toledo Made Us This Nice Billboard From G-d and all hope is not lost:

Budget Compromise Happens, U.S. Government Still Exists But Is Still Mad Tho

After weeks of vicious bickering between Congress Democrats and Republicans about what’s worth spending the government’s money on, their latest stop-gap measure of a temporary budget expired at midnight last night. There was a real fear that if a long-term budget couldn’t be agreed upon, a “government shutdown” would have to occur – a suspension of federal government agencies that would have required the government to “furlough an estimated 800,000 government workers, close national parks, passport offices and other operations, and suspend an array of federal services” without the money to keep them running.

Republicans urged cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, largely because it provides abortions to some women, although (as many pointed out) abortions make up such a small part of Planned Parenthood’s work that in effect, the measure would mostly have cut access to contraception and treatment for STDs. Nor does any federal money directly fund abortion services SO IT’S TOTALLY IRRELEVANT.

Last night, Democrats and Republicans finally managed a compromise that didn’t please everyone, but that will enable the government to remain in business while they continue to bicker about the details of the agreement.

In the end, budget cuts totaled $39 billion, and many of the cuts Democrats had feared most did not come to pass. Some of the things that did not get cut include:

+ Planned Parenthood will remain funded in the compromise, although there will be a separate vote about it later in the Senate. (It is not expected to be defunded in that vote either.)

+ NPR. GOP threats to defund public radio were dropped.

+ The Affordable Care Act. Obama’s health care law will remain funded, although there will also be a separate vote on it in the Senate – especially in light of the fact that judges earlier this year found part of it unconstitutional, there may well end up being changes to the law.

+ The EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency will remain funded to regulate the level of greenhouse gases.

+ The FCC. A provision from the Republicans that would have barred funding for the FCC to implement “net neutrality” rules was dropped.

At least one new provision was created – a school voucher system for low-income children of the District of Columbia. Just like any compromise, though, everyone had to give something up. Some things were bills that people had worked very hard for and that would have helped a lot of people, and they were cut anyways. Some of the things for which funding was banned:

+ Funding to transfer prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center to the US mainland.

+ The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created last year and which Republicans have been widely critical of, will now have to undergo an annual audit on its use of funding.

+ Funding for abortions in the District of Columbia will be banned. (If you are confused by this because federal funding for abortions was already banned in general, you are not alone.)

+ Free Choice Vouchers. This was the bill sponsored by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and it would have helped people for whom health insurance coverage costs between 8 and 9.8% of their annual income by letting them take their employer’s health insurance contribution to an insurance provider that costs less.

+ In the new compromise, Obama is prohibited from additional funding for the IRS, which could affect the agency’s ability to actually enforce the healthcare law. The compromise also calls for several new studies on the effectiveness of the health care law – its “impact on premiums, the waivers the administration has given to limited-benefit health plans, the comparative effectiveness research funds in the law and the 2009 stimulus package, and the cost of the contractors who have been hired to implement the law.” Republicans hope that they can eventually defeat it if it’s proven to be less effective than Democrats had hoped.

Although Democrats were able to protect many of the federal and cultural institutions that they value most, this was still a good day for Speaker of the House John Boehner. Although he’s been under heavy criticism from conservatives and especially the Tea Party for not pushing as hard as they wanted on budget cuts, although one could argue that the Tea Party’s expectations in this regard were less than reasonable. Now, however, Boehner seems to have won them and the conservatives of America back as a group, and is being hailed as the ‘winner’ of the budget fracas.

Fox News headlines on the subject include “Who Won The Shutdown Showdown? It Wasn’t Even Close” as well as “How He Did It: Three Keys To Boehner’s Budget Victory”. If you are interested in hearing a socially liberal interpretation of what “victory” for Boehner means for the rest of the country, try Melissa’s post at Shakesville: “Not only is the US government pursuing an austerity strategy, which is a terrible idea in every conceivable way, and will fail to stimulate growth while simultaneously creating a greater strain on underfunded social programs, but this “success” has come at the expense of women’s reproductive rights.”

Boehner has already become the face of the Republicans of Congress and of the Republican House’s animosity towards the Senate and President, and it will be interesting to see how his ‘budget victory’ affects his standing and his goals for the new fiscal year. In the coverage of the compromise, he is set against Harry Reid, each of them described as champions of their respective parties, with Boehner’s priority being reduced government spending and Reid’s being access to healthcare, especially for women. (Reid claimed that the stall in closing the deal came from Boehner’s insistence on attacking the Title X program, which provides family planning services for low-income women, while Boehner claimed the issue was ‘spending levels.’)

The bill isn’t in effect yet; ironically, the government is still actually using one more ’emergency stop-gap measure’ to keep things going while they work out the details of the new agreement. Not everyone supports or endorses the compromise; a few Republicans have said they will vote against it “lacks many of the important bipartisan policy provisions my colleagues and I supported: stopping Obamacare, rolling back the job-killing EPA and defunding Planned Parenthood,” as Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas says. Nancy Pelosi has stopped short of endorsing the bill also, saying only that “House Democrats look forward to reviewing the components of the final funding measure.” Although there will be more voting in Congress on the subject of how to spend the government’s money, it seems unlikely that these provisions will change significantly.

The financial compromise is welcome, and it’s comforting not only that the government will have the money to keep running, but that the people who are in charge were able to on some level put the continued function of our nation’s leadership above their personal priorities. The conflicting stories already being told the next day about the process of compromise, however, tell a different and more unsettling story. When one side uses the language of “coming together” and the other is still using the language of “showdowns” and “victory,” it raises more questions than answers on what the continued functioning of the government is going to look like.

Rep. John Boehner Scared Of Change, Gay People, Wants To Defend DOMA

When Obama announced that the Department of Justice would no longer defend DOMA in court, and Rep. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to begin the repeal process, DOMA’s fate seemed maybe not sealed exactly, but certainly looking worse than it had last month. Rep. John Boehner – yes, the same one who prioritized the bill arguing that there was such a thing as “forcible rape” and, accordingly “nonforcible rape” – has decided that he’s not ready to give up. According to Boehner, the Republican-led House of Representatives can appoint its own counsel to defend DOMA, so as to avoid becoming “complicit in the President’s neglect of duty.” In fact, his exact words were:

“I’m really disappointed in the President and the Department of Justice in the fact that they’re not going to defend a law that Congress passed overwhelmingly. It’s their responsibility to do that. Now, it’s happened before where administrations have decided they weren’t going to go out and vigorously defend a law that Congress passed but I really am disappointed in the President in his actions but if the President won’t lead, if the President won’t defend DOMA then you’ll see the House of Representatives defend our actions in passing a bill that frankly passed overwhelmingly.”

This is the option that’s been recommended by Rick Santorum, the aggressively anti-gay senator from Pennyslvania. There are a few details perhaps worth noting when considering Boehner’s statement – for instance, that the DoJ has recommended that DOMA not be defended because it’s unconstitutional (at least the section dealing with whether marriage is between one man and one woman) which is in fact what their responsibility is, not mechanically arguing in defense of everything that comes through Congress. Or that the level of support that Congress lends to something isn’t necessarily the best metric for whether it should be protected by law, considering that Congress has also passed things like de jure segregation and a resolution to go to war in Iraq in order to divest them of their weapons of mass destruction. But hey, who’s counting?

How effective Santorum and Boehner’s plan might be remains to be seen – it may not happen at all, and even if it does, the House-appointed counsel may not be enough to prop up DOMA for much longer. On the other hand, the House’s obvious disapproval of this move by Obama means it will be very difficult to pass Rep. Feinstein’s repeal bill through the House. Perhaps more than anything else this move goes to showcase how far the House is willing to take their stance of opposition to Obama’s administration; their attacks on Planned Parenthood and NPR already haven’t been particularly effective, as they would need cooperation from the Senate and President to make real change, but have demonstrated that they’re willing to use their legislative power to categorically lash out at every measure or cause championed by the left.

Even if, as in the case of collective bargaining in Wisconsin, it doesn’t actually do anything to help them or alleviate ‘budget concerns.’ Although Boehner and especially Santorum have shown plenty of ill will towards gays in the past, and this move might well come from a place of homophobia and bigotry, it seems just as likely that it comes from a deep-seated compulsion to make sure that no one left of center (of left of straight) has anything that they want, ever. Obama’s been accused of making his latest moves with the 2012 election in mind, but if you’re really concerned about the outcome of that election, it might be the Republicans’ strategy you want to be more concerned about.

House Votes to Pull Federal Funding from Planned Parenthood, Does Not Know How to Treat a Woman

As many had feared and/or expected, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted today to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. After an exhaustive debate, the bill passed 240 to 185 this afternoon. Ten Democrats joined the GOP vote, while seven Republicans voted to continue supporting the organization that has provided essential and sometimes lifesaving care to millions of women.

Don’t panic about your ability to get birth control this month, there is virtually zero chance that this bill will also pass in the Senate. In fact, most of the budget proposals made by the House in the last week (cutting NPR and PBS funding for example) won’t ever make it to Obama’s desk. The president has also specifically set aside $372 million for family planning in his 2012 budget.

Planned Parenthood and the services it provides will not actually collapse because of this vote. That’s great, but it’s only a small victory if it could even be characterized as a “victory” at all.

This bill sends an unmistakable message to American women that they don’t matter and that their access to vital reproductive health services is not worthy of the government’s support, let alone protection. I don’t think we’re exaggerating when we say that this measure is a declaration of war against American women.

Just to put this in perspective, the House also voted to continue the program in which the Pentagon funds a NASCAR team. A bill introduced by Rep. Betty McCollum would have prevented the Pentagon from spending $7 million on NASCAR and $5 million on drag racing, not counting money also spent by the Air Force and Navy on the same thing. That’s right, NASCAR is more important than your right to reproductive health.

The vote seems especially heartless in light of the testimony of Jackie Speier, the Congresswoman who testified today about her own abortion in front of the entire House and basically the country. Her brave decision to offer up her own personal experience stands in sharp contrast to a the rest of the House, a group that is overwhelmingly disproportionate in its representation of straight white men.

That group decided today that it’s more important to pay for cars to move around a track in the hopes that it somehow inspires more people to join the military.

Combined with the vitriolic and unrelenting attacks on the Affordable Care Act, the GOP has clearly announced a position on the poor or even the not-independently-wealthy of America: your problems are your own fault, and it’s your job to deal with them, regardless of whether you have any resources to do so. But please join the Army to defend this country which begrudgingly houses your body over which you have limited agency!

Let’s be clear that this bill is extremely short sighted and would end up costing the government a bunch of money. According to Planned Parenthood, 35% of their services are contraceptive in nature. Only 3% are abortion. They estimate that their services avert about 612,000 unplanned pregnancies every year. If Planned Parenthood isn’t around to give people access to those contraceptive services, then those unplanned pregnancies wouldn’t be averted and the government and our health care industry are going to be on the hook for all of the costs associated with them.

“Funding family planning saves the government over $3 for every $1 spent on health care and welfare programs,” Gloria Feldt, author and former President of Planned Parenthood, told Tina Dupuy of the East Valley Tribune. “So eliminating family planning programs is the least conservative, most fiscally irresponsible thing they could do.”

If you need any more convincing on why Planned Parenthood is essential for women in this country, please read Riese’s now timely article from last week, “The PP & Me: Why We All Need Planned Parenthood.”

Luckily for us, the people fighting for reproductive justice are brave, and hopefully the message sent by the House today will make it only as far as it needs to to incite people to action and to bolster the ranks in this fight. If you’re looking for something to do, signing this petition is a good start, and donating to Planned Parenthood is always great.

There’s also a good post here about who to call and yell at and things you can do besides/in addition to calling people and yelling at them.

Congresswomen Try to Save Planned Parenthood With Honesty, True Stories, Facts

In the heated House debate yesterday on a proposal to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding for women’s health and sex education services, one speech stood out. California representative Jackie Speier said she would abandon her prepared remarks because “my stomach is in knots.” Then she told the world about her own abortion.

In her case, it was a wanted pregnancy she had to terminate because of complicated. “But for you to stand on this floor and to suggest, as you have, that somehow this is a procedure that is either welcomed or done cavalierly or done without any thought is preposterous.” She then went on to say that Republicans were wasting the time of Americans, who are primarily concerned with jobs and not with what is, last time we all checked, a legal procedure. There’s no other way to say it: She kicked ass. (Also, just hearing the word vagina on the House floor is excitement enough.)

Meanwhile, Rep. Gwen Moore of Wisconsin showed yet another reason why it’s important to elect women and people of color — the prospect of a bunch of old white guys standing around talking about black women’s fertility and alleged genocide. After Rep. Paul Brown said (falsely) that clinics target neighborhoods where people of color live and that “more black babies are killed” by Planned Parenthood, Moore replied, “I know all about black babies. I’ve had three of them. I had the first one at the ripe old age of 18.” She knows something else, too: Republicans’ policies show “utter contempt for poor women and poor children.” (The anti-abortion site LifeNews took aim at Moore for going “as far as implying that it is better to have an abortion than make a child be forced to live ‘eating Ramen noodles’ and ‘mayonnaise sandwiches.'” Food lobbyists can’t be pleased either.)

The idea of cutting Title X funding, which provides $317 million to family planning services that includes Planned Parenthood, is sufficiently radical enough that the Times ended its piece with this uncharacteristically pointed kicker:

In an e-mailed response, Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, said the answer was not to support a group that, in her words, helps sex traffickers. But she did not suggest how Planned Parenthood’s birth control services could be replaced.

This is one of those true colors moments, where it becomes clear that this isn’t really about abortion alone, but is about a deep-seated opposition even to birth control and safe sex.

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By Irin Carmon, originally published on Jezebel. Republished WITH PERMISSION MOTHERF*CKERS.

The PP & Me: Why We All Need Planned Parenthood

I was 16 the first time I visited Planned Parenthood. I’d had sex, you see. Actual sex! Three whole times! My gay best friend Hayden and I had decided, despite his homosexuality, that we were so “emotionally close” that it was only natural for us to lose our “straight virginities” to each other. It happened at boarding school, though, so my Mom had no idea. Also, I didn’t want to tell her. But I knew that my newfound sexuality required a speculum and various tests and evaluations, pronto, and so I covertly made my first Planned Parenthood appointment while home for the summer, and I went.

Since that first visit to the Planned Parenthood in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I’ve been to Planned Parenthoods in Traverse City MI, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Downtown Manhattan and Oakland, California. My most recent visit to Planned Parenthood was about a month ago. I’ve been visiting Planned Parenthood for 13 years, which makes it my longest relationship with any health care provider. Or really, with anything.

Planned Parenthood serves more than three million women, men and teens nationwide every year and right now its ongoing existence is again in jeopardy. From XXFactor’s Going After Planned Parenthood, published yesterday:

There are 154 co-sponsors in the House for a bill denying government funding to any organization that provides abortion services. Congress already prohibits any government money being directed toward abortions except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, and has since 1976. The $300 million-plus in government funding and contracts Planned Parenthood currently receives goes toward providing family planning and medical assistance to 1.85 million low-income women. As Gail Collins points out in “The Siege of Planned Parenthood,” there’s no comparable organization in this country offering those services. If Planned Parenthood closes its doors (the clear hope of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence and the 154 colleagues who’ve jumped on his bandwagon), then those women will go without—when for every dollar in public funding spend on family planning services, Medicaid saves $4.02 the next year.

Right-wing pro-life action groups have been attempting to discredit PP’s benefits for years, and they’ve lately been resorting to one of their favorite tactics — sending fake pimps and prostitutes to clinics with cameras in some kind of To Catch An Abortion Provider style propaganda campaign.

But Planned Parenthood isn’t just about providing abortions (which account for only 3% of the services PP provides) or services to at-risk populations, although that’s what it’s most revered for. It’s also a rare beacon of support and care for average everyday teenagers who, for a number of culturally reinforced reasons, are scared to talk to their family doctor or parents about birth control but are responsible/educated enough to know they need it. I’m extremely lucky — I was reared on Our Bodies Ourselves in a liberal college town with great sex ed. Although abortion was a forbidden topic (pro or against), we were thoroughly schooled about contraception. Most of my Ann Arbor friends were sexually active by the time we hit university, but nobody I knew ever got pregnant. We were all on the pill. Planned Parenthood saved us from ever needing to consider abortion in the first place. In fact, our county (Washtenaw) maintains the third-lowest teen pregnancy rate in the state.

Furthermore, as an adult I’ve noted that amongst queers and sex workers, Planned Parenthood can be the only place where these women feel comfortable speaking openly about their sex lives without fearing rejection or political attacks. (See also: Why Are Lesbians So Afraid of the Gynecologist?) It’s a vulnerable place to be — half-naked, legs splayed, cold metal wrenching your vadge open while someone pokes wooden sticks up there. In a country where 50.7 million people are uninsured, Planned Parenthood isn’t something extra we could do away with. It’s something we can’t live without.

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Where I grew up in Michigan, the closest Planned Parenthood was just off a major parkway that connected Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, right by the Denny’s and Big Boys we’d haunt late at night in search of french fries, key lime pie and smoking sections. Planned Parenthood was set back off the road and shrouded by trees, obscuring any lifers standing outside with fetus posters. Services were free for people under 18 and then proceeded on a sliding scale. Boys slangily called it “The PP,” so when a boy said his girl was going to “The PP,” other boys got jealous that he was apparently heading for the dreamy destination of no-condom-ville, enabled by magical pills and a litany of STD tests.

I felt sort of grown-up after that first visit, when I left Planned Parenthood with a paper bag containing six months of Ortho-Tri-Cyclen, but I didn’t actually take the pills at first. It felt silly because due to, you know, my partner’s homosexuality (I’d yet to recognize my own), we weren’t exactly fucking like bunnies. I’d only see Hayden for ten days that summer, anyhow, and we’d maybe do it 2-3 times and I’d be wracked with insecurity 24/7. So did I really NEED to take Ortho-Tri-Cyclen? No, not really.

But two weeks into my senior year at boarding school, I had unPlanned sex with Brett Wyatt. I remember, acutely, sitting on the cold concrete steps of his dormitory as he dashed in for the condoms his roommate’s girlfriend had smuggled from the Traverse City Planned Parenthood. My limbs felt hot and dizzy, like I might faint or melt, and I halfway wanted to disappear but I couldn’t ’cause Brett was sexy and had dated all the prettiest girls last year. He was a drama major — compact, strong, fit, with serious dark eyes. I remembered seeing him push a girlfriend against a soda machine and start kissing her last year and I’d wished Hayden would push me against a soda machine.

He emerged, we went into the woods, we found an empty cabin. I felt like a real person, desired for all the right reasons, no longer the scrawny girl with no chin and mosquito-bite-breasts that nobody wanted to kiss. It lasted about three minutes and afterward he jokingly asked me, “So, where are you from?” I already knew where he was from ’cause when they’d called out “Georgia” at our opening assembly, he’d stood up and hooted/hollered in a Southern twang. He was like that. He always stood up and yelled and made everyone laugh.

Now he was on top of me. It all happened so fast.

My best friend Kyra was convinced I was out of control and would shortly acquire AIDS or a baby. We’d seen the movies where Trojans split open like banana peels, uncovering sheaths of sperm and disease. I told her about the birth control I had in a paper bag.

“Okay then, you are going to start taking that right now. Okay?” she said. “RIGHT NOW.”

So I did. Taking the first pill felt like a commitment to something, but I didn’t know what yet.

I was 16. I was a “late bloomer,” so I’d only had my period for about a year and a half before submitting my cycle to modern medicine.

Brett and I dated all year. We never talked about sex, we just did it. Meanwhile the Ortho-Tri-Cyclen pushed me, at last, into something resembling puberty — I gained weight and a whole entire cup size! I loved it. Every night at 10pm I took my pill and it felt like I was wrapping a permanent condom around my dreams.

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Life moved gamely forward and from the age of 18 on, I stayed on the pill and had sporadic health insurance coverage but always found something innately reassuring about Planned Parenthood’s existence, wherever I was living at the time.

In retrospect, the Ann Arbor Planned Parenthood is a rare bastion of efficiency. Still, even there I’d wait for hours sometimes, sulking with jealousy towards the girls who’d somehow convinced their boyfriends to accompany them. These bored, lofty teenage boys flipped through old magazines and complained about Jerry Springer while I had thoughts like “I wish [x] cared about my sexual health as much as I care about my sexual health.” But always being alone did make it feel like my sexuality was about ME first, and about whatever partner I had second.

In 2002 I successfully cajoled my live-in boyfriend Zach into joining me at the clinic. By the time I finally got seen and got my pills and was ready to go, Zach had turned three chairs into a bed and was sleeping on my winter jacket. It meant a lot to me, though. Him coming. Like we were in this together.

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the downtown manhattan planned parenthood

In 2004, I moved to New York. I quit the pill ’cause the brand they’d switched me to made me bleed constantly, in contrast to the discontinued brand I’d started using to procure no more than 3 periods a year. Going off the pill felt like coming up from underwater and also signified, for me, the end of the era in which I constantly put myself at risk for pregnancy by using male sexual desire to validate my existence which required taking sole responsibility for their irresponsibility. Then, within a year or two I’d stopped dating men altogether.

But I continued patronizing Planned Parenthood, mostly because it was free or almost-free — I still have never had my very own gynecologist, that seems fancy and unnecessary. The Manhattan Planned Parenthood was a mini-nightmare. The waits were seemingly endless, the waiting room overstuffed, the doctors frazzled and overworked. The Brooklyn Planned Parenthood’s waiting room was also a total shitshow, though the staff was as friendly as always. I’d recommend The Bronx Planned Parenthood, where I went for my annual because it was easier than going through Medicaid. I only waited an hour and the nurse laughed at all my jokes.

But even in those crowded Planned Parenthoods I felt comfortable. Like they were on my side, and whatever I said wouldn’t be judged, because PP is Liberal, right? With a capital L. I guess it’s how people feel when they go into Subway or Starbucks in a new town — “I know this, I know what to do here.” The comfort of knowing that this has always been here, exactly the same every time in every place, and will never go away. Unless, I guess, it does.

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Last month in Oakland I put “homosexuality” as my preferred method of birth control and the nurse practitioner told me I needed to be in the market for birth control to be seen there, so she was just gonna write “condom.” It seemed odd but I didn’t panic. It was Planned Parenthood. Maybe she was new or hadn’t seen a homo before.

Sure enough, when the doctor came in 20 minutes to a year later, the first thing she told me was that the nurse was wrong about that birth control thing. The doctor was tall and broad-shouldered, with glasses and short alternatively lifestyled hair and I knew she was gay before she even told me so, or showed me photos of her daughter and made sure I knew they welcomed queers there.

It was free. I donated $20, like I’ve always done. I left. I thought about how my life has been so all over the place that I rarely have a chance to return to old spaces as a new person and reflect self-indulgently on how much I’ve changed, but I felt really grown-up this time.

I wasn’t the insecure 16-year-old clutching my paper bag and thinking how I’d never actually need it.

I wasn’t the 21-year-old too embarrassed to tell my asshole boyfriend that I thought I might have a yeast infection let alone tell him I was going to PP to check it out let alone ask him to come with me.

I wasn’t the 24-year-old accompanying a girl I was sleeping with to the Manhattan Planned Parenthood to get her annual and her pills because her boyfriend was an asshole, too, feeling a desperate shot of validation when she wrote “1” next to ‘female sexual partners’ on her intake form.

Now I was 29 and had a partner who texted to ask me how it went the minute I left the building. I hadn’t been irrationally scared that the doctor would out me to myself when she saw my bisexual stats.

I hadn’t even been performing my traditional role of the girl who habitually disregards her health due to a lack of health insurance! This thing, this sexual health thing — this is a thing I can do. This is one thing I can take care of.  Even in America.

The act of walking into a room and essentially asking somebody to look at your vagina is an inherently nervewracking experience, especially for queers AND especially for sex workers (who are being targeted by the Live Action group as somehow unworthy of any medical care). Even though it’s not personal, the idea that someone could walk in and say, “No, it is not necessary/legal/acceptable for me to look at your vagina, please close your legs and get out of here” is petrifying.

When discussing the necessity of Planned Parenthood’s existence, we rightly focus on the work its doing to bring sex education, contraceptive options and abortions to women who wouldn’t know how to access it otherwise.

But there’s also places where Planned Parenthood is already working, where they moved in uneventfully and succeeded immediately — like Ann Arbor. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood, which relies on government grants and contracts, individual contributors, and large donors like Bill Gates to fund its 820 health centers, is the only reliable source of no-hassle, agency-empowered, low-cost/free health care of any kind for uninsured women like me.

Without Planned Parenthood, I wouldn’t have gone on the pill in 1998 and, seeing as I haven’t slept with a dude since 2005, I probably wouldn’t ever visit a gynecologist now. It’s our best model for how socialized health care could function in this country – countless hours spent in waiting rooms and all! PP has certainly served me better than the nonexistent health coverage that the U.S.’s cultural and political “superiority” ought to guarantee.

Funding Planned Parenthood is the one and only thing the U.S. government has done to demonstrate even superficial interest in my health (or the health of its citizens) and I will fight like hell to keep this relationship going. And you should too.

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Donate to Planned Parenthood, sign this petition, or read about how you can get involved.

Why Are Gay Ladies So Afraid of the Gynecologist?

Hello little grasshoppers! Natalie here. How is everyone doing? Blergalicious? Great, me too! Get your paper gown on ’cause we’re gonna dive right in to some very messy paradigms via the health of your cervical canal: gender, sex and sexuality.

See, most people understand gender, sex and sexuality in the context of an imposed binary system. This system ignores our varied experiences, desires and expressions in favor of simple, one-dimensional norms and arbitrary delineations. The result is an uncomfortable compression and homogenization of the spectrum of human experience.

Case in point: going to the gynecologist. We saddle up, feet in stirrups, ready to go and…bamn! suddenly all become heterosexual women with one interest: reproduction! There are a million areas in which the gender binary structure cheats people of their individuality and violates basic human rights, and the experience of queer women at the gyno is just one example of the overarching and pervasive heteronormativity structuring our daily existence. (sidenote: Microsoft Word does not recognize the word heteronormativity. Just saying!)
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